Anode rotational frequency and tolerable, non-destructive electron beam peak power levels of rotating anodes in X-ray tubes are limited by the material characteristics of the metal—usually molybdenum—used for the anode disk.
EP 2 188 827 B1 describes a hybrid design of an anode disk structure for high power X-ray tube configurations of the rotary-anode type.
The therein described X-ray tube configuration is equipped with anodes. The described design principle thereby provides means to overcome thermal limitation of peak power by allowing extremely fast rotation of the anode. An X-ray system equipped with a high peak power anode is also described. Such a high-speed rotary anode disk can be applied in X-ray tubes for material inspection or medical radiography, for X-ray imaging applications which are needed for acquiring image data of moving objects in real-time, such as e.g. in the scope of cardiac CT, or for any other X-ray imaging application. The described system is directed to a rotary anode disk divided into distinct anode segments with adjacent anode segments.